Pressure Points from Iran, D.C. & the Pump for You & Me and Ugandan Christianity – Top 3 Takeaways – March 30th, 2026
Takeaway #1: Under pressure
Entering this week there’s a lot of pressure on a lot of people in many places. Whatever will be it figures to be a highly consequential week. There's the pressure for the Trump administration to stick the landing on Iran. There’s the pressure on TSA employees who’ve once again been working for about five weeks without getting paid. There’s pressure on Meta and essentially all social media companies after the company’s legal losses last week, there’s pressure on the Supreme Court to decide who’s a citizen under the 14th Amendment. And there’s the pressure pushing down on me, pressure pushing down on you – at the pump and at the airport and commonly at the grocery store. Here’s a potentially fun fact. Did you know that Under Pressure was an entirely unintentional song written in the summer of 1981 when David Bowie just happened to stop by to see Queen thinking that he might contribute to a song that was to be called “Cool Cat” that was never released. The music legends instead were just jamming to other musician’s songs when David Bowie famously said “this is stupid” we should just write something. So, over the next 24 hours straight – they did, and “People on the Streets” was born. What’s People on the Streets? Under Pressure. Once they recorded the song in the studio, it was renamed. So, the back story to Under Pressure is full of fun facts. A chance get together mostly just to hang out and have fun. A bored David Bowie who also didn’t like the song that he was actually supposed to sing with Queen. A song written on the fly inside of a day. A name for the song that was never used...and an end result that not only produced a timeless hit, but that also was in part responsible for another massive hit – Vanilla Ice’s - ICE, ICE Baby. Anyway – the reason that came to mind yesterday is there are a lot of highly consequential things that are going on right now and that will be taking place this week and there’s what’s clearly
Takeaway #2 A lot of improvising and reworking things on the fly involved with many of those things
Let’s start with the war in Iran. Yesterday in Pakistan, numerous middle east leaders met for the purpose of discussing potential Iranian peace. While that was taking place 3,500 additional U.S. troops arrived in the middle east as the prospect for a potential ground invasion grew with the most recent statement from Iran’s parliamentary speaker being: As long as the Americans seek Iran's surrender, our response is that we will never accept humiliation. That doesn’t sound good, however, there are signs of progress that aren’t being widely reported. Last week the key for the Trump administration was determining who’s really in charge of the country and whether the people they were talking to actually had the juice to do the things they said they could do. The test laid out by the Trump administration was for Iran to allow for oil tankers to travel through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran agreed to allow eight through (and two more made it through during the test for a total of ten). But then for two more days no oil tankers went through until after President Trump announced on Friday that he was opening up a new ten-day window for negotiations with Iranian officials. Since then, for each of the past three days, two oil tankers per day have been allowed through the Strait. It’s a far cry from the 100 that ordinarily travel through the Strait daily, however it is a sign of progress during this otherwise improvised peace process. And the pressure for resolution is building for the Trump administration as oil closed Friday at over $101 per barrel – for the highest closing price in about 3.5 years. The risk for higher inflation sticking once again is rising – as is the cost of living in real-time every time someone fills up at the pump. There’s pricing pressure, there’s inflationary pressure and there’s political pressure in this midterm election year too. But there’s also pressure on Iran as U.S. reinforcements are arriving in the region but also as the region continues to take sides uniting against the radical Islamic nation’s leadership. Not only has Saudi Arabia indicated their open to joining the war militarily but now even the Ugandan military. In one of the most remarkable statements by any country’s leadership to date – Uganda's top general and son of Uganda’s president said this:
Takeaway #3 We stand with Israel because we are Christians...
Uganda is the David that was forgotten and neglected by the world. We will defeat the giant, Goliath. We want the war in the Middle East to end now. The world is tired of it. But any talk of destroying or defeating Israel will bring us into the war. On the side of Israel! To that I say amen... As for TSA – on Friday House Republicans rejected the Senate’s Homeland Security funding deal that would have established a dangerous precident – funding Homeland Security without funding ICE and Border Patrol along with it. As I mentioned on Friday – it's not the case that that ICE and Border Patrol would be without funding right now – as they were funded through next year through last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But what it would have done is set the stage for potentially permanent problems with getting ICE and Border Patrol funding through DHS appropriations into the future. So instead, President Trump signed the executive order creating an emergency declaration for TSA to get paid. The word is that those paychecks will be received today. That should help ease the TSA concerns and callouts considerably – however it’s only a temporary fix and we’re still down hundreds of TSA agents who’ve quit. As for Meta and social media’s issues – the concerns after last week’s two legal losses, for Meta determining that they’ve known for at least a decade the harm that their social media platforms could do – is being viewed by many as the company and industry’s “big tobacco” moment. There is a chance that going forward, social media platforms won’t exist as they do today. And Wednesday the Supreme Court will hear the case that will determine the path forward for citizenship in this country as the challenge to President Trump’s executive order stating that babies born in this country to illegal aliens aren’t entitled to American citizenship. It’s a big week filled with lots of pressure from Iran, to D.C. to the prices at the pump which will once again be rising. Let’s hope the outcomes end up being as good as the end result for Queen and David Bowie.